It's that time of year when every reaction to what's happening in Major League Baseball is of the knee-jerk variety. The 2023 season isn't even a week old. Nothing means anything yet.

This being said, we just can't help ourselves.

We simply have to talk about 10 early storylines that almost certainly don't have lasting power, but which are nonetheless intriguing for the slim possibilities that they actually might. This is to say there's enough wiggle room for rationalization, so we took it.

If you're hoping to read about, say, the early dominance of the Tampa Bay Rays and Minnesota Twins and the disastrous start of the Philadelphia Phillies, you'll have to wait a day. Those stories have more meat on their bones, so we're saving them for a "Winners and Losers" piece that will go live Thursday morning. Stay tuned.

Otherwise, we'll start with six player-specific stories and end with four big-picture ones.

The Anthony Volpe Hype Was Justified

Anthony Volpe is only a New Jersey native who grew up a huge New York Yankees fan and is now playing where Derek Jeter used to roam, so...yeah, no pressure, kid.

The 21-year-old hasn't looked like he's under any kind of pressure as he's gotten on base seven times and swiped three bags in his first five games in The Show.

OK, fine. You can point out that Volpe has only gotten on base three times via base hits. That's in 14 at-bats, amounting to a .214 average. Not exactly a Shelton-ian start to the season, to be sure.

Discipline and baserunning are nonetheless good foundations for Volpe to build on, and he has both. This is the same guy who went 50-for-57 stealing bases in the minors last year, and he hasn't done much fishing outside the zone as he's racked up four walks so far.

Joey Gallo Is Back!

While we're on Yankee-related matters, remember when Joey Gallo joined them in July 2021 and promptly hit a league-low .160 over his next 184 games? Bad times, to say the least.

If Gallo's first four games with the Minnesota Twins are any indication, those times are mercifully over. The 29-year-old has collected four hits in 16 at-bats, and in classic Gallo-like fashion. They're all extra-base hits, including three home runs.

This isn't terribly surprising, and not just because Gallo has been open about being more comfortable with Minnesota than he was with the Yankees or the Los Angeles Dodgers. The two-time All-Star and Gold Glover also spent the winter bringing much-needed simplicity to his hitting mechanics.

The bad news is that the strikeouts are still there in abundance for Gallo, who's rocking a 35.3 strikeout percentage thus far. But he's once again making up for all the whiffs by pulverizing what he does hit. After sinking to 89.6 mph in 2022, his average exit velocity has skyrocketed back up to 98.4 mph.

Adam Duvall Was Best Signing of the Offseason

The Boston Red Sox may have lost Xander Bogaerts and J.D. Martinez to free agency, but at least they had the good sense to sign Adam Duvall to a one-year, $7 million deal.

They've arguably already gotten their money's worth. Duvall's early stat line borders on hilarious, as he's 10-for-21 with six extra-base hits and nine runs batted in, two of which came on his walk-off blast against the Baltimore Orioles on Saturday.

As for how the Red Sox were able to get Duvall on such a cheap deal, well, that'll happen when a guy struggles before undergoing season-ending wrist surgery. Nonetheless, signing him was always a high-reward maneuver.

It was only two years ago that Duvall, 34, won a Gold Glove and went off for 38 home runs and a National League-leading 113 RBI. And given that he's always been a prolific pull hitter, he was a fit for Fenway Park in the abstract even before he revealed himself to be one in reality.

Oh No, Jacob deGrom Is a Bust

Meanwhile in Texas, the Texas Rangers might be regretting that they didn't spend $185 million on 26 Adam Duvalls instead of on one Jacob deGrom.

The two-time Cy Young Award winner went into his first Rangers assignment having never allowed runs on Opening Day or as many as six extra-base hits in any start. The Philadelphia Phillies put both streaks to rest.

Ah, but deGrom also struck out seven batters and walked nobody, mainly through heavy use of a fastball that touched 101 mph. To these ends, at least, the 34-year-old was his usual dominant self.

It nonetheless bears noting that his average fastball was 98.5 mph, marking another step down from his peak of 99.3 mph from 2021. As his opening fastballs from 2020 and 2021 were ultimately prophetic of his overall velocity that year, it's not beyond the pale to think that deGrom's best fastball-throwing days are behind him.

Jeffrey Springs Is the Best Pitcher in MLB

We've seen enough, and are officially starting a petition to have the Cy Young Award rechristened as the Jeffrey Springs Award.

If nobody minds a blatant understatement, the left-hander's 2023 debut for the Tampa Bay Rays went pretty well. As in, "pitched six no-hit innings with one walk and 12 strikeouts" well.

Now that's how you pick up where you left off. And we really mean it in this case, as Springs was quietly one of baseball's more effective starters after he moved into Tampa Bay's rotation on May 9, 2022. His 24 starts after that yielded a 2.65 ERA with 130 strikeouts against only 28 walks.

Springs only throws his fastball in the low 90s, but it plays up thanks to his extension and how well he pairs it with a devastating changeup that's now among the best thrown by left-handers. He's a living reminder of a familiar cautionary tale: don't trade with the Rays.

Brian Anderson Is the Best Hitter in MLB

The Milwaukee Brewers came into this season with an offense that looked generally inoffensive, but which nonetheless seemed to lack a "that guy." As in, someone to carry them like Christian Yelich did back in 2018 and 2019.

Turns out we were underestimating the strength of Brian Anderson's shoulders. This is figuratively speaking, as he has indeed carried Milwaukee's offense by hitting safely in all five games and racking up a .533/.579/1.200 slash line with three home runs.

Yet we also literally underestimated Anderson's shoulders. Specifically his left one, on which he had surgery in Sep. 2021 that left him feeling less than 100 percent healthy until this past winter.

The 29-year-old, formerly of the Miami Marlins, teased with a 1.048 OPS in spring training that he was about to go off in 2023, and he hasn't exactly lucked into all his big numbers so far. His page at Baseball Savant consists of basically nothing but red-shaded batting metrics.

The Blue Jays Can't Hit Home Runs. All Is Lost.

The Washington Nationals are one of two teams tied at the bottom of MLB with just two home runs, but at least they have a good excuse. Namely, a lack of sluggers.

Now then, what's the Toronto Blue Jays' excuse?

It took until the top of the ninth inning of their fourth game for them to get the first of their two long balls, courtesy of a meaningless solo shot by Bo Bichette. Though not the reason, it's certainly a reason they're just 2-3 so far.

Though it does send off alarms that the Jays, who clubbed an even 200 home runs in 2022, haven't been hitting their fly balls with much oomph, this more so feels like an early sign that they will indeed miss Teoscar Hernández, who already has two home runs of his own with the Seattle Mariners.

The Reds Have the NL's Nastiest Rotation Trio

Guess whose starting pitchers were leading the National League in strikeout percentage as of April 2. Here's a hint: the title of this slide is, well, a hint.

Anyway, the answer is the Cincinnati Reds. Their top three starters are Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo and Graham Ashcraft, and they mostly looked mighty good in whiffing 23 of the 68 batters they faced in their opening assignments.

That Greene and Lodolo are dominating out of the gate could have been expected. They're nasty and coming into 2023 hot, to boot. In the last 10 starts they made in September and October, they combined for a 1.82 ERA and 86 strikeouts in 59.1 innings.

We would call Ashcraft the sleeper of the three, but that would be denying him proper credit. He has a 97 mph fastball that he doesn't even like to use, preferring instead to rely on a cutter and slider that rated strongly in 2022. He may be less sleeper and more third ace.

The Orioles Are Going to Make Stolen Base History

If you give an Orioles hitter a base, you can expect him to take at least one more.

The Red Sox found this out the hard way as the Orioles stole 10 bases in the first two games of their opening series, making the O's the first team to ever do so. Though they've swiped only one base since then, they're still the first non-Kansas City Royals team with at least 11 steals in five games since the 1991 New York Mets.

Take the Orioles' average of 2.2 steals per game and extrapolate it out over 162 games, and you get a pace for 356 stolen bases. They'd be the first AL/NL team to go there since 1899.

On a 1-to-10 scale of how ridiculous it is to expect the Orioles to actually go there, we're going to hedge toward the less ridiculous end with a solid 3. The bases are bigger, after all, and manager Brandon Hyde wasn't just talking about Jorge Mateo and Cedric Mullins when he said: "When we have an opportunity to run, we're gonna run."

We Were Promised More Balls in Play, Darn It

It isn't just the Orioles. The league-wide rate of stolen bases is up so far. And with the average time of game down 27 minutes from 2022, the bigger bases and the pitch timer are clearly working as intended.

We were, however, also promised that the new rules would lead to more balls in play. It is with a heavy heart that we report that they're not there.

Albeit ever so slightly, balls in play per team game are down from 24.4 in 2022 to 24.3 so far in 2023. In a related story, strikeouts, walks and home runs are all up. Long live the three true outcomes. Damn the three true outcomes.

As to how to explain this, the best we have for now is that the pitch timer isn't causing pitchers to sacrifice velocity as part of their efforts to keep pace. Quite the opposite, as the average fastball is up from 92.9 mph last April to 93.1 mph so far this season.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.